I run Classic apps very rarely and often forget to quit the Classic Environment when I quit the Classic application. I didn't want to add a permanent icon to the menu bar or dock to indicate Classic status; I only wanted some way to be notified if Classic was currently running. If you make the following changes, Classic will now show up in your dock as if it were a regular app. You can even quit it from the Dock! Best of all, it doesn't require a third party piece of software, just a change to how Classic reports itself to the system.

The instructions below will tell you how to turn off the 'background-only' flag in the SIZE resource of the Classic Support application in your System Folder. If you understand what I just said, you probably don't need the following instructions.

IMPORTANT ... click the radio button marked Resource at the bottom of the window.

Navigate to the System Folder that you use to run Classic apps (it will probably be at the root of your boot drive).

Inside the System Folder, you will find a file named "Classic Support." Select and open it. A window of gobbledy-gook will appear.

Make note of the size of the file in the top right corner (should be 0000339E).

Hit Command-F or choose Find... from the Find menu. The Find window will appear.

Make sure the Hex radio button is selected in the Find window, and enter the following string into the 'Find:' field: 5DE4

Click the Find button. It will bring the window of gobbledy-gook into the foreground and select the found string. Just to the right of the selected text will be the string "Classic Compatibility Environment 1.8." You should also see that just after this, a grey box has been drawn around the ]. characters.

Use your mouse to highlight just the ] character instead of both (].) characters.

Press the shift key, and type an uppercase Y to replace the ] character. The original 5DE4 string should now read 59E4. I would have just told you to use the Find & Replace command in HexEdit, but at the time of this writing, that function did not seem to work.

Make sure the size of the file has not changed (see step five). If it hasn't changed, save the file and quit. If it has changed, close the file without saving and start again.

That's it. The next time Classic starts up, it will have a Dock icon to alert you to the fact that it is running, and which can be used to quit it.